Current Issues in the Philosophy of Mind. 2020-21.

Winter Term.

2 credits.

General description. The course will cover problems associated with giving a naturalistic account of perceptual consciousness, and problems associated with a naturalistic account of thinking – the latter is a topic much less covered, until recently, than the former.

We will follow the development of materialist theories of perceptual consciousness from the early work of J.J.C. Smart and D. M. Armstrong (still the best and most lucid, in my view), through Davidson and Putnam, to the currently fashionable ‘phenomenal concept strategy’.

We will then consider the rise of neutral monism and panpsychism.

On thinking, we will start by considering radical empiricist views, such as associationism and behaviourism, then computational theories. From Searle’s ‘Chinese Room’ argument, we will move on to cognitive phenomenology, which is the investigation of the role of consciousness in thought, then finally the possibility of a immaterialist theory of thought with Platonic and Aristotelian roots.

The goal of the first part of the course is to make students familiar, at an advanced level, with the contemporary controversies concerning consciousness, covering not only materialism, but the recently fashionable panpsychism. Most of this material is well- known in contemporary discussion. The second part is, for the most part, much less familiar, and concerns the theory of thinking. The goal is to illustrate problems with naturalistic theories of thought, and to look at classical, non-materialist, alternatives.

The outcome should be for students to understand in what ways both these aspects of the mind – consciousness and thought – are problematic from a naturalistic point of view.

There are no formal prerequisites, but it would help if students have some acquaintance with the literature on the mind-body problem.

Final evaluation will be based on an essay of 2,000 words. The crude American marking system we employ (A, A-, B+, B, B-, etc) is insufficiently sensitive. I shall mark essays according to a finer grain, but adjust to a permitted mark on the basis of contribution in class. For example, if I think and essay is worth B+?+ and the writer said little in class, he or she will receive a B+, but if they have shone in class, it will be an A-.

Syllabus.

For the first half of the course, Part I of From the Knowledge Argument to Mental Substance. Resurrecting the Mind is directly relevant to most sessions. It also has an extensive bibliography. (This book will be put on moodle.)

Week 1. The ‘classical’ mind-brain identity theory. Reading: J. J. C. Smart, ‘Sensations and brain processes’, Philosophical Review, 1959, 141-56. Reprinted in many collections. D. M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of the Mind, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968, esp ch. 6.

Week 2. Mary and the knowledge argument (and related arguments) Frank Jackson, ‘Epiphenomenal qualia’, Philosophical Quarterly, 1982, 127-36. Reprinted many times. The collection There is Something about Mary, eds Ludlow, Nagasawa and Stoljar, contains many relevant pieces, including Jackson’s retraction.

Week 3. Dennett and Lewis’s responses to the argument. Daniel Dennett, ‘What robo-Mary knows’, in Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge, eds Alter and Walter, OUP 2007. David Lewis, ‘What experience teaches’, in There is Something about Mary.

Week 4. The phenomenal concept strategy. Katalin Balog, ‘In defence of the phenomenal concept strategy’, in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2012, 1-23.

Week 5. Wittgenstein’s anti-private-language argument. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, esp. c. paras 240-275. Kripke, Wittgenstein and Rule-Following, Oxford 1976. Robinson, Perception, Routledge 1994, ch. 4.

Week 6. New departures: neutral monism and pan-psychism. Galen Strawson, ‘Real materialism’ in Real Materialism and Other Essays, Oxford, 2007.

Week7. Thinking as involving only relations between particulars. Eric Mandelbaum, ‘Associationism’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Week 8. Thinking as interpretation. Daniel Dennett, ‘True believers’, in his The Intentional Stance, MIT Press 1987.

Week 9. Thinking as computing. Putnam, ‘Minds and machines’ in vol.2 of his collected papers, Mind, Language and Reality, Cambridge 1975.

Week 10. Irreducible generality in the world. Armstrong, A Theory of Universals, vol.1: Nominalism and Realism, Part II.

Week 11. Thought as reflecting this generality: ‘forms’ as concepts and universals. Robinson, ‘Aristotle’s theory of the intellect and the shortcomings of modern computer intelligence’.

Week 12. Revision, and discussion of class papers.